Harper trying to keep ‘coalition monkey’ on opponent’s back

By Bill Mann

With Canada’s fourth national election campaign in seven years just underway leading up to a May 2 election, the question of a possible Liberal Party-led coalition is getting most of the attention in Canadian media.

Has Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff flatly rejected the idea of forming a “coalition of losers” if his party doesn’t win a majority of seats in Parliament in five weeks? He insists he has, getting the “coalition monkey,” as the Canadian media love calling it, off his back.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who called the election after losing a no-confidence vote in Ottawa last week, has been hammering away at the issue repeatedly, saying numerous times at an Ontario campaign stop this weekend that voters must choose between a majority Conservative government and a “reckless” Liberal-led coalition.

It reveals a strategy, the influential Toronto Globe and Mail reports, that the Prime Minister personally conceived and is determined to emphasize throughout this election campaign. This even though Harper’s minority government has ruled the past two years with a coalition of sorts, picking up votes from the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois parties on individual votes.

(Canada, by the way, has an activefourth political party, the liberal Green Party, that’s won several local and provincial seats around the country, but is still struggling to win a seat in Canada’s 308-seat Parliament).

“We’re ruling out a coalition,” Liberal leader Ignatieff has stated, a bit reluctantly.

Canada’s relatively mild downturn during the global recession, its increasingly strong dollar, and the absence of a Canadian real-estate or banking collapse will doubtless help Harper in this short spring campaign.

Hope trumps fear in Canada?

The Globe and Mail piece this past weekend on Harper’s “reckless coalition” strategy — he used the term “coalition” 21 times during the Ontario address — flies in the face of one Canadian political theory:

A senior Liberal strategist, speaking on background, told the Globe and Mail that “the Conservatives have forgotten the first rule of politics: that hope beats fear.”

That may be true in Canadian politics, which is far less caustic than America’s. In the U.S., fear rules in politics, at least these days.

Whichever party wins the most seats May 2 gets first crack at forming a government in Ottawa. If that fails, the second-highest party — that would be the Liberals — gets a shot at forming a government — i.e., a coalition.

And that’s where Harper is training his guns in this campaign. He invoked the fear card by telling campaign crowds this weekend, “Imagine giving a role in government to a party committed to the breakup of the country,” the Prime Minister warned.

He was referring to the Bloc Quebecois, which has the third-most seats in Ottawa (47) and is closely tied to Quebec’s never-say-die separatist movement. The NDP, or New Democratic Party, has 36 seats and is even more liberal than the Liberals. Harper’s Conservatives currently have 143 seats, Ignatieff’s Liberals 77.

Separatists — in Ottawa

So, it’s the threat of a coalition of leftists and separatists Harper will use to try to defeat Ignatieff. The latter is also busy fending off charges he’s been out of Canada too long and is a political opportunist.

And that’s the other matter the Liberal leader must deal with: A new Postmedia poll in Canada shows Ignatieff trails Harper badly (42 to 15 %) when Canadian voters are asked whom they trust to be the best leader.

So, Ignatieff will be wrestling with two big problems in this campaign: The “coalition monkey” and his personal unpopularity.